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'Missing' Bristol Burgesses: 1599-1607

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'Missing' Bristol Burgesses: 1599-1607 FIVE HUNDRED ‘MISSING’ BRISTOL BURGESSES: 1599-1607 CALENDARED FROM THE CORPORATION’S GREAT AUDIT BOOKS ROGER PRICE 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful to former City Archivist John Williams and his ever kind and patient staff at the Bristol Record Office for making the Great Audit volumes available to me for this study, and for permitting a photograph of one of the pages to be reproduced here. CONTENTS Introduction p 2 - 4 Part I: Calendar of New Burgesses in the Great Audits p 5 - 42 Part II: Alphabetical Index of New Burgesses p 43 - 60 Part III: Alphabetical Index of Patrons p 61 - 76 Part IV: General Index of All Persons p 77 - 86 Part V General Index of Trades & Titles p 87 - 88 'Missing' Bristol Burgesses 1599-1607 Page 1 INTRODUCTION The Burgess Books held at the Bristol Record Office (BRO 04358 & 04359(1-21) list all those individuals who were admitted to the freedom of the city; by which authority they were allowed to practise their respective trades and received certain other privileges such as a vote in elections. The surviving series commences in 1557 and continues thereafter into modern times: although after the mid-19th century the significance of freedom was much diminished and eventually became an honour bestowed for some particular service. All those entries have been calendared and indexed by members of the Bristol & Avon Family History Society (B&AFHS), and are available from them on their CD which was published in 2004: Bristol Burgess Books, Vols. 1 to 21, Index & Transcripts 1557-1995. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the Burgess Books: the volume covering the period from the beginning of June 1599 to the end of September 1607 was lost many years ago. Fortunately, the Great Audit Books (BRO F/Au/1/1-156), drawn up annually by the City Chamberlain to set out the Corporation’s financial affairs, contain duplicate entries – because burgesses had to pay a fee (called a fine) in order to be made free. All those entries in the audits have been extracted to compile the present work. Each audit of accounts was drawn up around Michaelmas (near the end of September) to cover the preceding year up to that date. For example, burgess money receipts in the volume for 1599 commenced in October 1598 and ended in September 1599: and so on throughout much of the series. Apart from filling in most of the gap in the Burgess Books, the Great Audits have the advantage of being (for the most part) written neatly and clearly in English, with only a few contractions - and those are usually obvious: so there is less likelihood of misreadings. A comparison of a selection of entries which occur in both series shows that they are overwhelmingly in agreement; although there are a few minor discrepancies in the exact date when the burgess paid his fine to the Corporation, and there are the usual variations in the spellings of many surnames. The audits of four years’ accounts were later bound together to comprise one separate volume. The surviving Great Audit volume for 1599-1604 (BRO F/Au/1/15) includes the years 1599, 1600, 1601 and 1604. This means that accounts for the years 1602 and 1603 are missing, so it is unlikely that a list of new burgesses who were admitted between October 1601 and September 1603 will ever be recovered in any detail. The volume for the years 1605-9 (BRO F/Au/1/16) is complete. In all, this study has recovered the details of 519 new burgesses from those volumes. It seems strange that both the Burgess Book and the Great Audits for the years 1602-3 are missing from two otherwise largely complete series. Exactly when they went astray remains unknown - although the audits were presumably lost before the adjacent years were bound together many years ago. They may have been independent losses, but it is could be that more than mere coincidence was involved. For some reason, the Burgess Book which contains freedoms up to 2 June 1599 terminated with only two entries on the final page – and that was not actually the last available blank page in that volume. It is not clear why the clerk did not continue with the freedoms up to at least the end of the following September – especially as there was room for quite a few more entries. Perhaps it was just chance that a new blank volume was taken up at that particular point. No explanation for the disappearance of that volume is known to have any supporting evidence to give it weight. The Burgess Book commencing 1607 starts at the top of the first folio in that book, as would be expected when a fresh volume was opened. It is also interesting that for the year commencing at the beginning of October 1603 (ie in the 1604 audit) there are no receipts of burgess money until 7 January 1603/4. There is no reason to suppose that any pages of the audit have been lost; which implies that no new burgesses were made free from October to December 1603: ie during the months following directly on after those that may have been found in the ‘lost’ volumes. Why there should have been a gap of at least three full months (and perhaps even longer before that) is not known. Perhaps the omissions were related to the political uncertainties of the early 17th century, following the death of Queen Elizabeth I and the accession of James I. The historian John Latimer recorded in his Annals of Bristol in the seventeenth century that the new king was not particularly welcomed by Bristolians; especially as he lost no time in raising extra revenue from the population. Also, in June 1603 the plague had broken out in London and, despite the best efforts of the Corporation and leading citizens, it almost inevitably appeared in Bristol as well. The Bristol Corporation therefore acted in September 1603 to levy a substantial tax on wealthy burgesses to assist the poor. Perhaps ordinary citizens were reluctant to become burgesses in an attempt to avoid having to pay the tax; for they would have realized that in this context ‘wealthy’ was a relative and dubious term – but that is just speculation. Other explanations might be offered: for example deaths from the plague numbered around 'Missing' Bristol Burgesses 1599-1607 Page 2 3000 during the visitation – a substantial reduction in the population; but insufficient data have yet been collected to make any findings of real significance. In the present calendar, it was thought advisable to present surnames of individuals in the original spelling used in the manuscript; except for setting in full any obvious contractions and transcribing the occasional initial ‘ff’ as ‘F’. Variations are brought together in the General Index of All Persons towards the end of this work. As far as was practical, Christian names and trades are rendered according to modern usage. A bracketed dash (-) or [-] indicates that a piece of information (such as a name or a trade) was omitted in the original manuscript or there was some doubt as to the reading. It would appear that the chamberlain or his clerk made occasional mistakes in the date, especially when using Roman numerals. Any obvious inconsistencies are pointed out by enclosing the information in brackets. Dates between 1 January and 25 March (when the New Year then commenced) are indicated by a form such as 1 Feb 1601/2 - to show both how it was written in the original and how it would correspond to the style which is used today. There were five means by which the freedom was obtained: 1. The new burgess X had been the apprentice (normally for seven years, but sometimes longer) of an existing burgess Y, whose trade was also usually stated and was nearly always (but not necessarily) the same as that of the new burgess X. That was the most common means by which a citizen became a burgess. 2. The new burgess X had married A, the daughter of an existing or deceased burgess Y. The names of both the daughter and her father were given, usually accompanied by the father’s trade. 3. The new burgess X had married B, the widow of a deceased burgess Y. The name of the widow and her former husband were given, usually accompanied by the trade of the dead husband. 4. The new burgess X was the son of an existing or deceased burgess Y. The name of the father was also given, usually together with his trade. 5. The new burgess X paid a special fine to the Mayor and Aldermen. That was often the case when someone from outside the city, with no other connection, wished to practise his trade in Bristol. The new burgess was often granted a rebate on the fine, presumably taking into account an initial deposit. The entries in the Great Audit Books for the period considered here generally follow much the same standard formula as used in the Burgess Books, viz: X (trade stated) ys admitted into the Liberties of this Citty because he (reason stated) and paid iijs iiijd. Most of that formula is omitted in this work, as it does not add materially to the text; but anything unusual is included. Unless stated otherwise, the new burgess always paid a standard fine of three shillings and four pence; which is not included in the text but may be assumed. Abbreviations of the terms by which the new burgess was made free should be obvious, viz: app.
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